After overhearing Lan’s plan to carry her normal backpack around, Ring was quick to dissuade her of the notion. “How’s that going to solve anything? If anything carrying your schoolbag around as a handbag will make the problem worse, not better.”

Shyly, Mary volunteered, “I’ve got something that’d match this…” and retreated into her side of the portal for a moment, only to emerge with a crossbody bag styled to look like a vase of flowers. “Just pack your essentials into here,” she explained.

“You can get purses shaped like other things?!” Kaita marveled. His eyes sparkling, he looked at Mary. “Do you have a car purse?!”

“I’ve got one, but I don’t think Turboman would like it. It’s too pink for his tastes,” giggled Mary. “I’ll keep an eye out for you for the holidays, though!”

“Yippie! Thanks!” Obviously excited to someday have a fancy bag of his own, Kaita rifled through his own incongruous backpack, pulling out a few tools to put into the jacket pockets of his suit.

Once he was done, he got to his feet. “Okay… I think I’m about as prepared as I’m gonna get.” He turned to Lan. “Let’s go!”

Meiru looked around the alleyway she’d run down, even toward the rooftops, in an attempt to find the person she thought she’d run after. “Where are you?” she called. “Please come out! It’s not safe here!”

---

R-Blues pushed his way through the office space to the window below. He saw Desertman, the Lion Heads, and the tiny mop of hair in front of the mountainous Navi that the Lion Heads were aimed for; and leapt straight down, landing hard in front of Lan. “Dream Aura!”

He’d barely made it in time; sand went flying both inside and out of the Dream Aura as the Lion Heads, too close to completely block, were torn apart instead. R-Blues moved to block as much of it as he could from the human he’d rescued. “We need to get you out of here,” R-Blues said, his eyes fixed on Desertman. It was only then that he turned around and, while reaching a hand out to pick her up, realized, “Netto-chan?!”

…Was that a knife in her hand? If she seriously thought she was going to be backing him up with that, she had another think coming…

Meiru squeezed her eyes shut against the sand carried by the wind, then saw movement as soon as she opened them. “Wait!” Meiru immediately gave chase, sprinting around the corner of the brick building where she’d sworn she’d seen someone retreat…

---

Rather than indulge Lan, Desertman simply laughed, “Gwa-ha-ha-ha-ha…” Sand began to pulse out from his main body, aiming to knock Lan off her feet and pin her legs under the sand. “Carry the sight of this Mirage Space to the afterlife!”

---

The building was so entirely filled with sand that R-Blues had a hard time hearing anything that was going on outside. But he could faintly hear laughter rumbling from below. He easily cut through the Sabotekoron sailing toward his head, cleaved the Sunaamu trying to surprise him from behind in half, and ran for the window outside.

Never one to pass up a dramatic entrance, R-Blues elected to enter the fusing skyscrapers by smashing through the nearest unblocked window rather than working his way up the stairs. But inside, all there was to see was more and more of the same sand pouring itself all over the street below. Surely, it had to be coming from a source, being the only thing in sight that absolutely didn’t belong in an office building…?

R-Blues noticed that, despite how full up with sand the building seemed from the outside, the door to the stairwell was still open. “Let’s start heading downstairs, then,” Enzan decided. R-Blues slid down the dune created by the sand pouring through the entrance and found the stairwell to be like a waterfall of sand, easy enough to traverse with his inhuman reflexes.

The next floor was similarly devoid of any clues; and the next, and the next. “Are we in the wrong place?” Enzan wondered.

“Enzan-sama, watch out!” R-Blues turned and plunged an Aqua Sword into a Sunaamu leaping from overhead, then cut through two more following it. Perhaps this was the right place after all…

---

The way the air kept thickening reminded Meiru of trying to enter the Blood Point-infested Dimensional Area back in Darkland. But what was even stranger was how she was failing to find anyone, alive or dead. “Why is this happening…?” she wondered.

“Why does Rush have to be gone now…?” bemoaned Roll. “There hasn’t been any real danger yet, but this’s still really, really bad to be wandering around in…!”

“You’re right,” Meiru said, stopping and taking a better look around. The strange textures, the red hexagons in the air… it was definitely a form of Dimensional Area. But if it wasn’t a standard Dimensional Area…

With the confidence and dramatic pose of a heroine, Meiru held her PET arm aloft. “Plug in, Roll! Transmission!”

An eerie silence fell over the warped street.

“I don’t think it works that way, Meiru-chan,” Roll finally admitted sheepishly. “I did try…”

“No people, but no viruses…” Meiru’s shoulders slumped. “What am I doing here? Some help I am…”

“Maybe we should head back to the car for now,” Roll suggested. “We can always patrol the perimeter to make sure nobody tries to get in.”

As a last-ditch attempt, Meiru called, “Hello! Is anyone still here?” Still a bit embarrassed about the failed plug-in, she turned around to take Roll’s advice.

R-Blues burst toward the sand-shedding skyscraper with the help of an Air Shoes chip as soon as Meiru parked the car, leaving her to lock up, fix her witch hat back on her head like it really was a magic talisman, and make her much slower way into whatever was happening at the harbor.

“These buildings…” Meiru slowed down as she walked by an industrial warehouse that had been partially subsumed by what looked like an old office building. “Some of them are far too run-down to be in this part of town…”

“It’s like they got taken out of the outskirts and mixed in with Densan Harbor,” Roll mused from her perch on Meiru’s shoulder. “But we didn’t get any reports from there.”

Meiru wasn’t sure if that necessarily meant anything; the parts of the city that had never gotten rebuilt from the substantiation attacks of years past had become the sort of place where anyone could hide without fear of being reported upon. But it was true that something on this level would still garner enough attention to make the news.

And it was also true that Meiru, for all her years of investigating those ruined roads, didn’t recognize any of the buildings that had been mixed into Densan Harbor at all. There were none of the characteristic signs of damage from a virus or Cyber Beast, either. They were just in need of some refurbishment.

The air began to press down on her as she ventured deeper into the affected area, much like it had in R-Roll and R-Blues’s battle underneath the Citadel. Every now and then, she could see red hexagons flickering in and out of existence. It seemed, between the red color, the heaviness of the air, and the wrongness of the terrain, that Netto was right about this Dimensional Area being glitched in some way. She hugged her PET wrist closer to herself. “What a terrible time for this to happen,” she murmured.

“We’ll manage, Meiru-chan,” Roll reassured her. “I’m still getting signals from the local networks. I’ll be at the ready, so plug me in the minute any enemies appear, and I’ll take ‘em down the old-fashioned way!”

Meiru nodded. “Thanks, Roll.” With a bravado she didn’t quite feel, she refocused on her search for bystanders. At the very least, it seemed that nobody had been trapped so far. She kept her eyes and ears open for anyone who needed help to escape as she continued her investigation.

“We had to get into a party for Densan’s underground artists once!” Mary explained. “So Mum made us haute couture outfits to get us past the bouncer.”

“It’s real fun to see you Operators all dressed up!” giggled Ring.

Mary then watched as Lan rejected reasonable outfit after reasonable outfit, only for Triese to call her bluff. “You really don’t have to,” she fretted, noticing how forced Lan’s acceptance of the frilly dress was. “It might distract you from what you’re there to do, if you’re not used to wearing a dress like that…”

“Noooo,” Ring said, just as impish as Triese. “The purple’ll go so well with Kaita’s suit! You’ll look like a perfect pair.”

Indeed, Kaita burst out, already having changed clothes, and came to a perfect halt in front of Mary so she could perform the traditional straightening of his collar. The purple and red did fit together quite well now that Mary was seeing the two colors next to one another, and the excessiveness of the dress made Kaita’s shiny satin seem perfectly paired in a way that a more subdued outfit wouldn’t have.

"See?" Ring said, giving voice to what Mary was too polite to point out. "It's gotta be that one!"

Halloween was swiftly approaching the Ministry of Science once again. The Net Saviors were hard at work decorating the lobby for the season and occasionally pulling cheap costume pieces out of the pile Meijin and Hikari-hakase had somehow managed to unearth for them.

In order to avoid the curly wig sitting ominously near the bottom of the pile, Enzan had tactically chosen a high-collared cape with a red lining early. (He was pretty sure nobody had ever heard of a ‘disco vampire’, after all.) From there, he’d chosen to focus on the task at hand, arranging various spiders and other creatures around the lobby to lurk in the wake of all the cobwebs Kaita was hanging up.

They were nearly finished when Meijin burst into the lobby at a run. The Net Saviors all straightened in anticipation. But instead of telling them all to come into the Main Room, he stopped in front of Enzan. “Could you come with me, Enzan-kun?” he asked.

Enzan knew what that meant right away. So did Meiru, staring at Meijin in shock. “What’s going on?” asked Kaita, earning him a concerned look from Enzan; the younger Net Saviors would have no way to know what was happening.

“Commissioner Manabe has been receiving reports of an incident at Densan Harbor. Not that we can do anything about it, but…” Meijin turned back to Enzan. “I just figured I should alert you anyway.”

Meiru asked, “Roll, what’s the news got to say?” Ever since the substantiation ban, it had been Meiru who got surreptitiously dispatched to these sorts of incidents, not Enzan. But now Rush was missing, and Enzan had a far more reliable Support Program of his own. It was clear from the look on her face how troubling it was to her.

“It’s definitely some kind of a Dimensional Area,” Roll began. “But, well…” She displayed Densan News Network’s coverage for everyone to see. Two skyscrapers had merged into one impossible mass overlooking the bay.

Netto observed, “It’s just like… the Dimensional Area’s scrambling everything inside…”

“That’s a Dimensional Area?” Kaita wondered, shocked.

“It isn’t of a type we’ve seen before, either,” Meijin said.

“No, I’ve seen something similar,” Netto said, less shakily. “It’s trying to load in something it shouldn’t, and that’s causing the whole Dimensional Area to freak out.”

But what Enzan noticed first was the sand pouring out of the lower skyscraper. He could accept everything else, but where had that come from?

“…I’ll drive us over,” Meiru told Enzan. “It’ll be just as fast as you’d be in Cross Fusion without using up any chips, and when I’m there I can at least help any bystanders evacuate.”

“I’m coming, too!” Netto said.

“But you can’t Cross Fuse now!” Meiru protested.

“Neither can you!” Netto argued back.

“Then, if that doesn’t matter, Mary-chan and I should also go!” Kaita decided.

Nearly as one, the older Net Saviors put their feet down: “Absolutely not!”

“You’re not in any sort of condition to be so close to the danger,” Rockman told Netto worriedly. “Your body wouldn’t hold up to a Cross Fusion, even if we had a Synchro Chip!”

“But—!”

“Netto-kun, Kaita-kun, Mary-chan, I’d like you to ride in the van with me,” Meijin decided before Netto could continue to argue. “Once Enzan-kun has the situation under control, we’ll be able to investigate safely. In the meantime, we can relay word back to Hikari-hakase, and vice versa.”

Reluctantly, Netto nodded before turning to Enzan and Meiru. “Just… make sure you really do get it under control.”

“We’ll be in broad daylight, remember?” Enzan pointed out with a smirk. “I’ll make it look easy. It’s part of the job now, remember?”

With their driving arrangements decided, Meiru and Enzan made a beeline to the former’s car.

Ring, of course, was won over the moment Triese called her ‘cool’. Much as Mary usually stayed vigilant against her Navi’s easily-inflated ego, Triese was so earnest about it that she didn’t want to ruin the mood.

“It’s nice to meet you, Triese-san,” Mary said sweetly once Rock had steered the conversation back onto Lan and Kaita’s mission.

“Yeah, it’s great to meet more of Netto-chan’s friends!” Kaita agreed.

With that, Mary considered Triese’s advice. “That won’t be difficult at all. We won’t even have to ask Mum for anything.”

“Nothing too flashy?!” groused Ring at nearly the same time.

“I’ll just go and fetch the suit you wore last time, Kaita-kun,” Mary said. “And then, if Triese-san is taking care of Netto-chan, we’ll be golden…”

She disappeared back into the portal she’d arrived in, then reappeared with a red satin suit. It had distinctive keycap-shaped buttons, since it had been made for a much more flashy situation. But since she hadn’t brought the avant-garde hat that went with it, and she’d substituted a normal white button-down shirt for the shiny black one it’d first been paired with, Mary figured it was normal enough for a casino party.

"Go on and change, Kaita-kun," Mary instructed with a smile. Once he'd stepped into Triese's bathroom to do so, she turned to the other two girls. "Now, let's see what our options are for Netto-chan."

"Yeah!" cheered Ring.

"We won't go too crazy, don't worry," Mary reassured Lan. "A nice pair of trousers should do."

"Aw..."

The Second of the Silver Division had grown up under the sterility of commercial lighting. She didn’t do ‘dark and mysterious’ in her work spaces. It hardly mattered how unusual her subjects were; they were all dragged into the light one way or another, their secrets extracted for her to see.

But this… In all her years of quantifying the phenomena this world had to offer, the task before her was the most unusual of all.

The only way she’d even known what she was looking at when it had first appeared had been thanks to a similar substance being documented in the Seventh’s blood. (At least the bastard could continue to be of some use to her after everything he’d done.) Now, it was trapped in a cage of metal and mineral, indicator lights blinking red as it transmitted a picture of a rundown Cyberworld unlike any she knew to exist here.

She was so very, very close. Just a few more tweaks along these lines, and the whole thing would almost certainly stabilize…

“Ciel. How is the next prototype coming along?” came a deep, rumbling voice.

The Second looked up into the floor-length mirror at her back. Shadowy figures lurked inside, some closer to her than others. Closest of all was a skull-like face familiar to her from intelligence reports she’d read in her past life, the ichor streaming from its mouth now tinted a strange red instead of the black it’d always been reported as.

“Excellently, Sigma,” the Second—or Ciel, now, with no Silver Division left for her to be a part of—said softly. “We will be able to attempt bringing a soul over in our next test.” She knew by this point in their partnership not to say it aloud, but it remained difficult for her not to call any of the things behind Sigma a specimen.

“My children yearn for a place to call home,” Sigma said, apparently pleased. Ciel, too, was pleased; the idea of the things those creatures could do with Sigma’s ambition backing them thrilled her. She had studied the Seventh’s battles in depth in the months leading up to his recruitment. Now, she would get to see him be torn apart in real time, and pick apart his remains at her leisure.

Sigma turned to face the world inside the Mirage Mirror. One figure was far closer to him at the front, and Ciel behind him, than any other. Ciel could even pick out two gleaming eyes and a cavernous mouth from the towering, shapeless mass of its shadow.

“Go forth, my disciple!” bade Sigma grandly. “Claim your place in the world!”

That, in turn, was Ciel’s cue. “Activating the Unity Engine,” she reported, watching carefully on the monitor as the energy levels rose. “Fossa Ambience in three… two…”

Once the group had moved to Triese’s house and the introductions were gotten out of the way, Kaita wasted no time calling Mary and arranging for her to join them. As Mary gingerly stepped through the portal, Kaita realized it was her first time traveling across dimensions, just like it had been for him. “This is amazing,” she whispered, looking around herself in awe.

“Right?!” Kaita happily agreed. “Meiru-san said the Fossa Ambiences used to feel way worse, but with the chatroom’s portals it’s really easy.”

“I didn’t feel a thing,” Mary said in agreement. “And now we’re in another world…”

“Awesome!” cheered Ring happily. She ran through the air around Mary’s shoulder, her arms raised wildly. “I’m in another dimension, guys! Check it out!”

“We’re all in another dimension,” Turboman flatly pointed out before turning to Mary. “Anyway, like Kaita said, we need your help!”

“That’s right,” Mary said. She turned to Triese. “Kaita-kun said something about dressing up for a casino party, right? How flashy are you thinking we ought to go...?"

Meiru blinked down at all the photographs in amazement. Another life sat there in front of her. “She went into academia? Wow,” she said, genuinely awed. In a world where Netto had never gone anywhere, where she had nothing to prove and nothing to give others as a Netbattler, she was capable of something like this? “That’s such a competitive field—she must be really talented.” Thinking of Mayl’s long hours spent mastering all aspects of her work on her own, her own time training to be able to take Netto’s place protecting Densan City alongside Enzan, Meiru could easily imagine that in a world where she dedicated that time to music theory and technique instead, she would find the potential to go far.

It was just so strange to think about, even as Netto asked for more information about the Meiru in front of him. Sad, even, this feeling of looking through a door that had closed. But she had closed it with a purpose, and for a reason.

“I guess we used to be called Officials, in the olden days? But I’m a Net Savior,” she explained to Netto. “I always followed you around on your missions, whether I should’ve or not. So when you disappeared, I guess it felt the most natural to me to keep going. Otherwise… I would’ve always wondered if I was doing all I could, y’know?” She smiled. “To be honest, you remind me a lot of the Netto who lives in my world, too, when he was younger.” Thinking about it, she couldn’t help but fondly giggle, “Even now, sometimes. You always sound so happy when you're talking about your friends.”

Kaita’s sympathy only grew, hearing that Lan absolutely did not want to do this, on any level. It was a bit of a tough situation to think through for him; it was true that going after the vault was important, but also true that he ought not to force Lan into it. “…We’ll take the vault back to my world when we’re done!” he finally settled on. “If you don’t like that guy, then we don’t have to help him.”

The whole ‘going downtown to the casino’ part, which was non-negotiable, seemed like a much more troubling issue. “I…” Kaita decided, “If it’s to do with the Arcana Viruses, I don’t wanna leave it alone. But if something bad happened, then I don’t think it’s weird or stupid if you don’t wanna go, either.”

“You’re not going to be allowed in to begin with, according to Rock over here,” Turboman pointed out. “So either you’ve gotta take us in remotely, or you’re gonna have to ride some crazy luck…”

“You know that’s no big deal! I’ll use my Net Savior badge, like always!” Kaita said.

“Will that even work here?” Turboman asked. “We’ll be disqualified before the starting line with credentials that nobody recognizes…”

For a moment, Kaita could only blink into the middle distance. “…Then we’ll have to dress up as people who do belong there! Just like old times!” He beamed at Lan. “Don’t you think it’s fun to wear a crazy disguise? Though, the best place I know to find them is by having Mary-chan ask her mom…”

“Towa-san is a fashion designer,” Turboman explained for Lan’s sake.

“But, that’s my world…” mused Kaita. “Towa-san always says things like how you have to dress for your occasion, and stuff. So, who would we go to here who’d know what to do…?” He abruptly stopped, shaking his head. “But I can deal with that later.” He turned back to Lan. “I wanna find that vault… but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

Kaita waited for the call to end, trying his hardest not to fidget even though he desperately wanted to talk to Lan without Wily around. Finally, the old doctor hung up, leaving Kaita free to turn to Lan and ask, “Are you okay? It felt like you couldn’t trust him, and you got so upset when he mentioned it was a casino…”

“What about me?!” whined Turboman.

Kaita glanced over to shrug, “Well, I can guess why you’re upset—”

“It’s a casino, Kaita,” Turboman couldn’t hold back from pointing out. “It isn’t even a fun kind of place you shouldn’t be going.” In an undertone, he huffed, “What did he mean, ‘given our gambling laws’?”

“Maybe it’s okay for kids to go to casinos in this world!” Kaita brightly offered for an explanation. “If we’re just following the law of the place we’re in, there’s nothing wrong, right?” Turboman wordlessly sputtered, not quite able to piece together a proper rebuttal.

With that, Kaita turned back to Lan, waiting to hear her out with big, friendly eyes.

“I guess we’d have to ask her about it,” was all Kaita could offer as an answer to why Meiru wouldn’t think of Dead Hand as a threat.

As Wily got down to business, Kaita nodded along. Turboman’s visor was displaying an expression somewhere between disbelief and alarm as Wily told the two kids to investigate a casino like it was nothing out of the ordinary. But it sounded like both the Net Saviors and Wily had plenty to gain from this mission, even beyond securing another vault...

“Got it!” Kaita said, not noticing Turboman’s discomfort… but immediately noticing Lan’s. There was probably no chance of her wanting to explain what was wrong in earshot of Wily, given how she’d been acting earlier. So he told their mysterious informant, “Shoot us the address and just leave it to us!”

"Of course we've been patient!" Roll immediately responded, her fidgeting stopping as she focused back on the conversation. "We're a team, after all!"

Another coffee from Roll's inventory was summoned to be pushed across the table to Aon, since she got the sense it wouldn't be wise to get up to go buy one in the middle of their conversation. It was one of the drinks currently on sale, an iced coffee with a purple cold foam topping and a pale blue straw. "I'll get myself a new one later, so this one's all yours," she explained. "Don't worry about it!"

Meiru and Roll exchanged glances at Aon's takeaway from the memories they'd all been forced to share. "You can say that again," was Meiru's first response. It hadn't been Aon's creation itself that had proven to be the most haunting part of his Vision Burst for her, but the photo next to his monitor. But Aon didn't even have that kind of connection to her own memory, or to Lan's.

Meiru had to think back on what had been in that Vision Burst. "That wasn't only mine to share, is the thing," she murmured, abashed anew by remembering that Aon had seen something so personal to herself, Enzan, and Netto.

"What you saw was a reunion," Roll explained carefully. "Three people getting back on the same page, after a long time apart. Meiru-chan and her best friends." She gave that information a moment to sink in. Then, gently, she asked, "Then, the memory of yours we saw... what did it mean to you?"

“Because it’s about the Arcana Viruses! I oughta help!” Kaita tried to explain over the panic.

(On his shoulder, Turboman wondered if his Operator had made the right move, but only for a moment. Everyone was following the same course now, after all, and the ride tended to be smoother that way. Besides, getting there faster was always better, in his opinion.)

At last, the ‘old man’ on the other end of the line regained temporary control of the conversation. Kaita listened intently, looking over at Lan when Wily addressed her in his explanation.

“‘Ancient crap’?” he wondered when Lan mentioned it, entirely earnest. “But, yeah. The way it got explained to me… it sounded like the program at the center of them was sucking up information from its surroundings, somehow. And that’s why they all turn out so different from each other.” He tilted his head. “But Meiru-san would’ve mentioned Dead Hand if she’d thought they knew about, y’know, the kinda stuff the Arcana Viruses have gotten up to since then…”

“Maybe they didn’t then, but they do now,” mused Turboman.

“Ah,” said Turboman, who had in fact assumed they were talking about whatever the equivalent was in Rock’s Internet.

“You really don’t have anything like it…?” wondered Kaita. He was genuinely amazed. Internet City was so old, and even discounting it there were independently-run webpages to visit, some of which were even older…

Before Kaita could reassure Lan that she was fine, her PET rang. It seemed obvious that she didn’t want to take the call, but just as obvious that she had to. Was this her version of Meijin-san…? He sounded a lot older… But he was speaking with authority about the Arcana Virus phenomenon, just like Meijin-san and Hikari-hakase would’ve to Kaita.

“Guess we’re drivin’ right into trouble,” Turboman whispered to his Operator.

“Looks like it.” Kaita didn’t really mind this turn of events; exploring the Internet and solving problems like this were what he did. But he couldn’t help but murmur, “Sorry, Hikari-san…” to the front door behind them. He hadn’t even realized what a relief it was to no longer need to lie to his parents until he found himself having lied to someone else’s. It was much more uncomfortable the second time around.

With that, Kaita stuck his head over the side so Lan and her caller could see, only to discover that said caller was voice-only. “Um, excuse me!” He turned on his Net Savior hologram on reflex, then remembered the other person couldn’t see it. “I’m Todoroki Kaita, with the Net Saviors of, uh, Beyondard!” he explained as quickly as his mind could recall the proper terms. “We’re doing research on the Arcana Viruses. Are you saying… that Dead Hand is trying to say the Arcana Viruses are theirs?”

“Yeah, Internet City!” Kaita answered Rock. “It’s a huge virtual world with lots of games and the Net Colosseum and stuff!”

“It started up a while ago now,” Turboman added. “Seven years, at least…”

Lan pointing out that they’d be able to talk more freely outside caused Kaita to nod enthusiastically in approval. “Let’s go!” He sprang to his feet and ran after her to the door, only stopping to quickly pull his shoes back onto his feet.

But Hikari-san’s interruption at the threshold, after the troubling interjection of earlier, stunned him into a momentary silence while he scrambled to figure out what to say. It wasn’t like his own mother had ever seemed to completely believe him when he tried to come up with what he could be doing that wasn’t ‘chasing down Nova’…

“We’ll stay out of trouble, Hikari-san! Promise!” he finally managed to blurt. Then, he took Lan by the wrist and marched the both of them out the door before anything else could be asked.

Once they were down the front steps and out of the lawn, Kaita could finally relax. “I think we’re in the clear!” he cheered to Lan.

Kaita felt both baffled by Hikari-san’s interruption—drugs?—and backed into a corner—‘in trouble online’ described basically everything Kaita and Turboman ever did there. He stayed huddled behind the couch, staring in the direction her voice was coming from with wide eyes.

“I guess ‘Official’ was the title before it got changed to ‘Net Savior’,” Turboman explained. “Dunno why it didn’t change for everyone else’s worlds. The new one sounds way cooler.” As Rock thought through Kaita’s example, he turned back to Kaita. “I don’t think Hikari-san was being serious.”

“Oh,” Kaita said faintly. His eyes met Lan’s before she began to throw out suggestions of what not to do.

“Not anime, and not Netbattling,” Turboman repeated for the nonexistent record, entirely serious. “Got it.”

“We could… go back outside, I guess?” Kaita suggested. “We could send our Navis to Internet City, or some other hangout spot? We could watch not-anime…”

“Why don’t you do something outdoors? Like… uh…” It was obviously taking some doing for Turboman to think of something that didn’t involve some form of vehicle. Kaita couldn’t help but smile.

“Frisbee, or soccer, or something,” he finished so his Navi didn’t have to stay stuck on it.

Now that she was seated and paying less attention to keeping the mug from spilling, Meiru noticed the burn wound. At first, the only thing that occurred to her was that it was an odd place for such a mark.

“Aw, okay,” said Roll. “Well, if you insist!” Meiru didn’t mind either way; she had her tea, and she wasn’t particularly hungry. She took a sip, looked up to watch Netto introduce himself. He seemed completely normal now, neither unaware of his own injuries or—

—Oh. That burn was in the spot she’d ripped the Link from.

“I’m… Meiru,” she began. It was hard for her to tell whether she ought to be apologizing for the burn or not. Whether Netto even remembered where it’d come from. She found herself thinking aloud more than anything. “I… really don’t know the first thing about you, do I? In my world, you’re, well, one of my best friends.”

“Netto means a lot to her. He and Rockman inspired us to fight!” Roll added. (An embarrassed cough rose from the PET on Meiru’s wrist.)

It was the truth. Meiru didn’t deny it. “I… guess that’s what’s made things so awkward. I feel like I oughta be able to talk to you, but…” She shook her head. “Which is ridiculous. I’m probably just as different from your version of me as you are to my version of you. If I even exist at all.”